Van Cleef & Arpels

Mercury, Venus, and Earth circle a pink-gold sun at their true speeds, so Earth takes a year to go around once. A diamond moon orbits Earth every 29.5 days. A shooting star tells the time. Christiaan van der Klaauw built the planetarium for Van Cleef & Arpels.

Turn the watch over and you find each planet’s name in French beside the stone that stands for that planet on the dial. A window at 6 o'clock shows the date and month, and one at 3 o'clock shows the year, so you can reset the planets if the watch stops. At the center, the turquoise Earth and diamond moon spin as you wear the watch and wind it.

A disc beneath the starry upper dial turns once a day, showing a gold sun by day and a mother-of-pearl moon by night. A pusher at 8 o'clock turns the dial a full circle in 10 seconds to show the current phase of the moon, even at noon.

The back shows the sky as you would see it from the moon. Van Cleef & Arpels engraved the moon’s craters into a white-gold crescent. Beside it, painted planets and stars turn with the rotor as you move your wrist, and an enamel Earth on the crystal above them stays still.

The star chart at the center maps the sky over Paris and turns one full circle a year, so it shows the sky of each season.

A hinged gold lid covers the back. Under the lid, a sapphire crystal shows the movement. The gray, crosshatched band around the edge is a slice of meteorite. Inside it, a ring with the twelve months shows the date, and you set it with a wheel on the back.

A butterfly on the dial beats its wings at random every two to four minutes, and more often while the watch is on the wrist. It also flutters on demand when you press the button on the side of the case.

Van Cleef & Arpels engraved grasses, flowers, a butterfly, and stars into the white-gold back. A round window shows the rotor, decorated with a crescent moon and a lily. The rotor turns as you wear the watch and winds it.

With her wand, a fairy points to the minutes, and the hour appears in a window in the moon. Her translucent wings combine two kinds of enamel, and Van Cleef & Arpels says it had never used the two together on one motif before.

The rotor under the back crystal shows an engraved full moon and stars. As the rotor turns, the moon and stars pass behind clouds fixed to the crystal.

A disc under the aventurine-glass sky turns once a day, so a gold sun shows by day and a diamond-paved moon by night. Van Cleef & Arpels spent three years updating its 2008 Lady Arpels Jour Nuit, and the new Lady Jour Nuit won the Ladies' Watch Prize at the 2024 Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.

On the back crystal, a fairy in enamel and platinum kneels and watches the sun rise. Behind her, polished stars and two shooting stars on the rotor turn whenever you move.